Commentary #6: Global Warming

[Subby]

Ah, the good old used car sales assumptive close.

Alarmists have done an excellent job selling the idea that "climate change" causes more extreme weather, by simply assuming it's obviously true.

But where is the coherent theoretical explanation for why this would be true, and the evidence - not model output, real data - supporting the claim? You can't find either with a microscope.

So let's ignore the fact that "average global temperature" is an ill-posed, thermodynamically meaningless term.

And let's ignore the fact that there is no way in God's creation we can statistically significantly separate out the anthropogenic signal from the extremely variable natural signal - a signal that has countless contributing dynamics that vary in frequency from 400 million years (as our solar system passes through spiral arms of the galaxy), to tens of millions of years (as plate tectonics completely transform ocean currents), to hundreds of thousands and tens of thousand of years (known as the Milankovitch cycles, as the Earth's orbital parameters change because of Jupiter's gravitational pull), and on and on, down to days, hours and seconds (from turbulence down to the smallest scales, cosmic ray bombardment, and countless other factors).

But use your Cartesian common sense.

If the Earth gets warmer, it is the higher latitudes that warm (or cool), hence periods of polar ice and no polar ice; the tropics, with their highly efficient convective throughput, tend to maintain a very stable temperature regime regardless.

So if higher latitude regions warmed a smidge and the tropics stay the same, then the temperature differential between them narrows, and it is temperature differences that drive weather.

So wouldn't common sense tell you weather extremes would narrow?

I've never thought about that, I'll take a stab at the coherent theory.

I've always just assumed that the global climate is relatively stable as all complex systems are, a finely tuned balance of various inputs and outputs that create a roughly predictable output like a global rube goldberg system that means it's hot as balls for me right now today, and in 6 months time it will probably be cooler.
Like all complex interrelated systems, small changes tend to magnify as they cause 2nd and 3rd order changes that become increasingly wild, like touching a spinning top with a feather. If the temp differential narrows, then the driver of weather reduces, theoretically this changes every output on a fundamental level, this is unlikely to improve stability.

Aside from all the global warming hysteria, the problem with "climate change" is that it will happen too fast for A) Humans to adapt too and B) the rest of Earth to adapt too, in a manner that won't perturb the world population, which is unlikely because like all animals, we tend to expand to the max available population that the environment will support. We don't have a buffer of 2 billion people that could be supported but we just don't expand to that level.

The theoretical argument would be a heuristic argument; changes to complex systems rarely improve stability.

Great post though, thanks for making me think about it.

[Cascadian]

I've always just assumed that the global climate is relatively stable ...

Subby, check out this spectacular 1 minute video of the temperature reconstruction from Greenlandic ice core data.

It's just a few still frames. Year is the X-axis. Temp is the Y-axis in Celsius; it's in the -30s because it's, you know, ... Greenland.

Each new frame looks at a longer inclusive time window, so make sure you can see the previous graph in each new graph.

And note the magnitude of the Temp scale changes as you progress.


Now ask yourself:

1) Is climate (which is really just the 30 year moving average of the graphs) stable?

2) When you look at the hockey stick, is there ANYTHING about it that stands out as abnormal relative to the rest of the signal? If you had never heard of "climate change," would you look at these graphs and shout "Holy fuck, look at THAT!", with your finger immediately pointing to that insignificant blip Mann dubbed the hockey stick?

3) When you look at the last graph, are you aware that there are some 30 more of those huge spikes going back a few million years. Each peak an interglacial respite in the still-ongoing Quaternary Ice Age. We are in an interglacial peak now - the Holocene. But we are still in an ice age. And the next glacial plunge will come. Although it is relatively warmer now than it has been during this ongoing ice age's glacial periods, today is still almost the coldest Earth has ever been.

4) People prattle on about, "Well, it's not the temperature change itself, it's the rate of change that's too fast for man and other life to adapt to." Okay, basic calculus: rate of change is the slope of the graph, the first derivative. Is there anything about the slope of the hockey stick that is more dramatic than all the other slopes of the graph?


Life has thrived through dramatic changes in temperature and their rates of change. In fact, those changes both cause, and are caused by, the spectacular evolution of life. Temperature shapes life, and life shapes temperature. Always has and always will.

So why is it suddenly a problem now?

When alarmists start to get cornered on their flimsy temperature arguments, they move the goal posts to: "Well its not the magnitude, but the rate of change that's unprecedented in all of history, and too rapid for life to adapt to."

Again, the rate of change is merely the first derivative of the temperature graph. It would be trivial for alarmists to generate the derivative of the temperature data, and show that the current rate is the highest in Earth's history.

I ask you, have you EVER SEEN such a graph?

[Ads]

I ask you, have you EVER SEEN such a graph?

I hadn't, thanks.

Australian Bureau of Metereology's shitfuckery.

In the recent round of estimates I asked the BOM if they acknowledged that their homogenisation artificially increased the temperature rise of the last 100 years.

They lied in their reply by saying that if they didn’t homogenise their records the increase would have been bigger.

This was a blatant lie.

Despite the Senator appearing to say "homogomised" repeatedly, he's one of the few 'switched on' politicians we have.

[Subby]

I ask you, have you EVER SEEN such a graph?

Of course not. Only when discussed by geologists over geological time frames.

I was referring to the climate being generally stable day to day and year to year. Each day is roughly similar to yesterday and each year is roughly similar to last year. I know that Summer will be hot and Winter cold. Stable according to the time frame of my life.

Re the rate of change. how many of those spikes were accompanied by mass die offs? I don't know too much about geology, but where I live, a semi arid area that see's snow flakes about once a decade and it makes news, has a geological history that's characterised by recent glaciation. It used to be covered by hundreds of metres of ice, it came and went relatively fast.
Life will adapt just fine, human civilisation won't however. Lets take the American midwest, one of the most productive food growing areas on the planet. It is so because of a convergence of climate factors (I don't know what they are but I imagine it's something along the lines of rich soil, regular rainfall, deposition of nutrient rich dust, suitable local flora and fauna), technology, political stability and infrastructure. If the climate shifted slowly and the convergence of factors shifted so that the ideal sweet spot for growing food moved south by 1 km per year. All of a sudden the infrastructure to collect all the harvested grain is just a train line to nowhere and has to be rebuilt or extended.

Eventually the foodbowl that is the midwest ends up in Mexico. Do you think they'll be able to harvest the amount of calories per square km that are harvested currently?

Life will be fine, but our civilisation isn't the most resilient to disturbances.

[Cascadian]

Despite the Senator appearing to say "homogomised" repeatedly, he's one of the few 'switched on' politicians we have.

That's what they do to data in San Francisco.

[Cascadian]

Life will be fine, but our civilisation isn't the most resilient to disturbances.

Hey Subby, first off, when I reread my post I realized it might have come across as aimed at you. Not at all; I actually thought your initial post was very thoughtful.

Anyway, I appreciate that you understand that life is resilient. So many think "Mother Nature" is incredibly fragile. Anyone who knows the story of life over geologic time knows that the exact opposite is true.

As for our civilization not being resilient, sure, one could argue that civilizations come and go, or perhaps emerge and fade into something else. But humans are extremely resilient and resourceful, and the human spirit is indefatigable.

The time separating the first plane, to landing on the moon was a mere 66 years, and human inquisitiveness and ingenuity keep accelerating.

Health is the ability to adapt.

[Mark Rippetoe]

The time separating the first plane, to landing on the moon was a mere 66 years, and human inquisitiveness and ingenuity keep accelerating.

Why haven't we been back? It's amazing how humans create governments that stifle inquisitiveness and ingenuity.

[mkm5]

Why haven't we been back? It's amazing how humans create governments that stifle inquisitiveness and ingenuity.

Why haven't we been back to the moon?

Good question; maybe Stanley Kubrick might be able to tell us if was still alive?

[Cascadian]

Why haven't we been back? It's amazing how humans create governments that stifle inquisitiveness and ingenuity.

It would be easy to be a good Christian
If it weren't for all these people.

Rip, there are many factors, but I think at least one significant factor is that the spectrum of people's need to control others is vast; many just want to mind their own business and do their thing, while others' business is to mind everyone else's business. Obviously, the dynamics are such that the former remain unconsolidated, while the latter - who are invariably midwits - coagulate into globs of control freaks we lovingly refer to as socialists, communists, welfare statists, liberals, etc.. Their hobby is to keep productive people from getting anything done, and God forbid if they do, they are to be bled dry in punishment.

Capitalism is about ever-improving productivity. If you are anti-capitalist, you are anti-production. And if you are anti-production, all that's left open to you is destruction.

Capitalists produce. Anti-capitalists destroy. Your observation is a symptom of this clash. Destroying is way easier than producing, so the midwits appear to be winning ... or at least greatly slowing things down.

The main battle front is the gold war, a fact that not one in a million is remotely aware of.

And so ... Steady as she sinks!

[golftdibrad]

Btw, try this experiment. Next time you have a hyperventilating alarmist in front of you, ask: "If Gaia herself told you that ALL of the imagined anthropogenic climate changes are in fact of 100% natural origin, would you still want to combat those natural changes at all cost?"

If the answer is yes, then the person is a pathological narcissist.

If the answer is no, then the person doesn't have a problem with the climate (even though they don't even know what "climate" means), they have a problem with humans. They hate man. They are misanthropes.

This is excellent, I'm going to use it in the future. Thanks.